Pre-structural - The task is not attacked appropriately; the student hasn’t really understood the point and uses too simple a way of going about it.
Uni-structural - The student's response only focuses on one relevant aspect.
Multi-structural - The student's response focuses on several relevant aspects but they are treated independently and additively. Assessment of this level is primarily quantitative.
Relational - The different aspects have become integrated into a coherent whole. This level is what is normally meant by an adequate understanding of some topic.
Extended abstract - The previous integrated whole may be conceptualised at a higher level of abstraction and generalised to a new topic or area.
The model consists of 5 levels of understanding
- Pre-structural - The task is not attacked appropriately; the student hasn’t really understood the point and uses too simple a way of going about it.
- Uni-structural - The student's response only focuses on one relevant aspect.
- Multi-structural - The student's response focuses on several relevant aspects but they are treated independently and additively. Assessment of this level is primarily quantitative.
- Relational - The different aspects have become integrated into a coherent whole. This level is what is normally meant by an adequate understanding of some topic.
- Extended abstract - The previous integrated whole may be conceptualised at a higher level of abstraction and generalised to a new topic or area.
Ref: Wikipedia "SOLO taxonomy"